If you want to improve at table tennis, you should do practice drills. This allows you to focus on specific parts of your game. How long should each drill be for?

It depends partly on your level and fitness, but even more on the drill itself.

If you do a footwork drill for a long time, you’ll get in shape. However, you won’t be able to do the drill as fast as you would if you did it for a shorter period of time. So you’d end up practicing footwork at a slower pace than you would want to do in a match.

So instead of trying to do footwork for ten minutes straight, why not do it for five minutes at a faster pace, let your practice partner do a five-minute drill, then do it for five more minutes?

You may want to do other drills that don’t involve such repetitive physical movements for a longer period of time. For example, if you do a serve and attack drill, the rallies will be much shorter (and so less tiring) than if you did a typical footwork drill – and so less tiring. For these drills, you should go the full ten minutes. If you only went five minutes, you might feel like you barely got the shots warmed up, and then it’s your partner’s turn.